Wyoming

November 08, 2012

If you’re one of the 18 to 29-year-olds who made up 19 percent of voters this year (a higher percentage youth vote than in 2008! Yay!), you are mostly likely unfamiliar with an annoying 1970s Chiffon Margarine TV commercial that goes “It’s Not Nice to Fool Mother Nature!” But whether you’re 18 or 85, that universal “don’t fool with me” sentiment seems to have marked a number of election contests this year, even besides the obvious (i.e., women, gays and pot!)

Let’s start with the California’s insurance industry. Don’t mess with the 1988 insurance reform initiative, Proposition 103, and the consumer group behind it, Consumer Watchdog. Billionaire Mercury Insurance Chairman George Joseph just wasted $17 million on his Proposition 33, which would have repealed Prop. 103’s provision preventing insurance companies from charging more to drivers who had a lapse in insurance coverage. This is about what Joseph spent almost exactly two years ago on basically the same ballot measure. Yet despite being outspent by Joseph 70 to 1 (the Consumer Watchdog coalition had only about $275,000), Prop 33 went down!
Next up for Consumer Watchdog: the health insurance industry!

Speaking of the insurance industry, seems like they’re a little nervous that their influence-peddling in Congress may be in need of some new targets. Reports the National Underwriter’s website,

Rep. Judy Biggert, R-Ill., was defeated for re-election, a
victim of redistricting. She headed the Subcommittee on Insurance, Housing and
Community Opportunity of the House Financial Services Committee, and was
expected to be a big player on insurance issues. She shepherded the [National
Flood Insurance Program] bill through its tortuous, five-year path to a
long-term extension. The bill was finally enacted in July. It is unclear who
will succeed her as chair of the insurance subcommittee. Biggert was also
expected to be a key player on regulatory issues as well as in gaining passage
of A Terrorism Risk Insurance Act extension. Joel Wood, senior vice president of congressional affairs of
the Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers, called Biggert's defeat,
“extremely disappointing to the insurance industry.”

I can see why they’re anxious. Between escaping payment for climate-related floods and getting bailed out for
terrorist attack losses, this industry clearly needs some
friends.

And speaking of elections, here are a few other interesting
outcomes:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce finally got their wish in West
Virginia, ousting consumer-friendly AG Darrell McGraw who had held office for
20 years, “perhaps marking the start of major changes to West Virginia consumer
protection litigation… [McGraw] has won the state more than $2 billion in
consumer protection lawsuit settlements against pharmaceutical, coal and
tobacco companies and unscrupulous lenders, according to his office.”

They also got supermajorities in states like Indiana,
Wyoming and Tennessee (both Houses), North Carolina (one House plus Governor)
and won back majorities in states like Wisconsin. (See more here and here.) But the good news is that state houses flipped the other way
in Colorado, New York, Maine, Minnesota, and Oregon (where there had been a
tie), with apparent supermajorities in California
and Illinois! And that awful New
Hampshire Speaker who pushed through that horrendous anti-patient medical malpractice bill (which
we covered here) is no longer speaker since the Democrats took over! Let’s hope a repeal is on the way!

Iowa
retained Justice David Wiggins, the Supreme Court Justice who had ruled on same-sex marriage with
a 54% retention rate. (This
is in counter to two years ago when 3 of Wiggins’ colleagues were thrown
out by voters.)

In North
Carolina, incumbent Supreme
Court Justice Paul Newby won over appellate Judge Sam “Jimmy”
Ervin IV thanks to an unprecedented and disturbing amount of outside money from business
interests and conservative groups.

In Mississippi, attorney Josiah Dennis Coleman won
over pro-consumer attorney Richard Phillips due to nasty outside money:
"The out-of-state special interest group Law Enforcement Alliance of
America ran advertising in north Mississippi blasting Phillips as a trial
lawyer who had filed a lot of lawsuits against business. …Phillips said
the Virginia-based LEAA was trying to buy a seat on the court. He said
such groups can put out negative ads that distort the truth without
disclosing who are the individuals paying for the ads."

January 13, 2012

Wyoming isn't nicknamed the “Equality State” for nothing. It’s the first state to grant women the right to vote (1869). The first woman was elected to statewide office there in 1894! Compare that to the sorry record of a big state like New York. But I wish I could say the same about the rights of workers in the great state of Equality.

Today, the New York Times is reporting on a pretty shocking report identifying “Wyoming, with its growing oil, gas and mining industries, [a]s one of the most dangerous places in the United States to work.”

Dr. Timothy Ryan, an epidemiologist, was hired by the state to study this problem and has since quit because of inaction by the state. His report, issued January 3, says, among other things:

Over the last year I have analyzed 17 years of occupational fatality data (1992-2008), read through fatality case reports, and have spoken with hundreds of employees working for various sized companies in the major industries in Wyoming. The common theme throughout is the lack of a “culture of safety” in Wyoming. Safety occurs as an afterthought. Greater than 85% of the fatality reports indicate that safety procedures were not followed. …

Wyoming averaged a fatality every ten days over the last ten years.

What's more, he notes, “Currently, OSHA inspections occur annually in less than 2% of Wyoming establishments. The inspections that do occur are primarily based on known incidents, employee complaints and those companies with a high level of workmen’s compensation claims.”

The report also noted that Wyoming had the highest workplace fatality rate in the country for all but one year from 2003 through 2008. In 2010, the last year that data was provided, Wyoming’s estimated occupational death rate was three and a half times the national average, the report said. …

To be sure, Wyoming’s oil and gas boom, which began in the 1990s, has drawn thousands of people with high-paying but dangerous jobs. In August, three workers were killed in Converse County after an explosion at an oil storage site. …

Oil and gas rig workers and their families are often itinerant, hold little political clout and fear that reporting safety problems could get them fired, said Laurie Goodman, a Wyoming lobbyist who has worked on occupational safety issues.

As we’ve noted before and is addressed at length in this Center for Justice & Democracy report, because the workers comp system fails to keep employers on any kind of legal "hook" for these conditions, the system itself perpetuates a culture of non-safety. The paper reports,

In 2009, Ms. Goodman and worker advocates tried unsuccessfully to get state lawmakers to pass a bill that would have made it easier for workers to file lawsuits after an accident.

“We have a system where there’s no accountability, where the employer has no incentive to be responsive,” said John Vincent, a former mayor of Riverton, who has represented the families of dead and injured oil and gas workers in his law practice and has worked on the legislative effort. “People are afraid to sue. They won’t report injuries. They’ll just stay at home until they get better.” …

“It seems like people die out there all the time. They’re leaving wives and children,” Ms. [Natlie] Moss, [whose young husband was killed] said. “What 26-year-old should have to plan a funeral?”

December 26, 2008

One thing we’ve learned here at ThePopTort is that the pursuit of justice through our civil courts seems to never take a vacation, not even during the holidays.

Not even for some Wyoming neurosurgeons who have brought a 14th Amendment equal protection lawsuit against a medical center for, among other things, defaming them. (Yes, you heard right, doctors are suing - again.) Of course, the medical center is saying the docs can’t sue claiming qualified immunity. (Hey docs, let us know how that feels!)

September 16, 2008

Great piece in Forbes, called “How caps on medical malpractice cases hurt the most vulnerable victims.”

LA Timesanalysis about the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case to decide if drug companies that produce defective or dangerous drugs should be immune from lawsuits. “If the ruling this fall is made for the defendant – the pharmaceutical company Wyeth – it would tilt the playing field largely in favor of the pharmaceutical industry...” says the paper.

Corporate lawyers for Chevron indicted by the Ecuadorean government “accused of being part of a conspiracy to fraudulently certify that Chevron predecessor Texaco had completed the cleanup of more than 100 mines in the Ecuadorean rainforest in the 1990s. The government released Chevron from liability on the basis of those certifications.”

Drug company influence on the medical profession is something we all know about – but here’s more proof. "The influence that the pharmaceutical companies, the for-profits, are having on every aspect of medicine ... is so blatant now you'd have to be deaf, blind and dumb not to see it," said Journal of the American Medical Association editor Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, a longtime industry critic. "We have just allowed them to take over, and it's our fault, the whole medical community."

You can't assume that any playground
is automatically safe, because the
Consumer Product Safety Commission standards are not mandatory."

Doroshow says their report explores the history of playground safety
issues and finds that often lawsuits are the quickest way to improve
safety. She says use of arsenic-treated wood in playgrounds is a good
example.

"Litigation has helped make sure that new playgrounds are not built
with arsenic-laced wood. Unfortunately, some of the older playgrounds
still have it."

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